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Optimizing Office Visits for Preventive Services #4: Other Services You Can Bill With a Wellness Visit

Kathy McCoy, MBA May 17th, 2012

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In a difficult reimbursement environment such as this one, it’s critical to get paid for all the billable services that you and your clinicians provide. Preventive services are one area that received short shrift in the past, but Medicare and commercial payers have just recently become more willing to pay for them. How can you ensure your medical billing capitalizes on this welcome trend?

That was the subject of a recent webinar sponsored by Kareo called Optimizing Office Visits for Preventive Services. Conducted by respected coding expert and author Betsy Nicoletti, M.S., CPC, the webinar offered valuable pointers on what services are considered preventive, the Welcome to Medicare visit and the Annual Wellness Visit now being funded by Medicare. Those were covered in our first three blogs on the webinar. Are there other services you can provide and bill for the same day as a wellness visit? Yes, and our final blog here will focus on those you can get paid for in conjunction with wellness visits.

Pelvic/breast exams (code G0101) are reimbursable when performed during a preventive services visit. Medicare pays for a pelvic/breast exam every year for high-risk patients, and every two years for low-risk patients. The exam must include inspection and palpation of the breast as one of 7 of 11 required elements of this type of exam. You can also bill for obtaining a screening pap smear by using code Q0091.

You can also bill for a problem-oriented office visit, but none of the documentation you have collected during the wellness visit can be used to determine the level of the services you have provided during the problem-oriented visit. And smoking cessation (G0436, G0437) is billable, but be sure the time you have spent is documented in the medical record and is in addition to (not part of) the other service.

In all cases, Betsy cautions coders and clinicians to be sure to include diagnosis codes. Failing to include them will trigger a denial. Be sure to link the diagnosis to the service for which you are billing.

While Medicare is now paying for some behavioral health services, the reimbursement is minimal. But clinicians can provide alcohol misuse screening and counseling, as well as screen for depression, and receive some reimbursement for it. These services must be provided in a primary care setting. Obesity counseling is also allowed weekly for one month, biweekly for months two through six and monthly if the patient has lost 3 kg in weeks seven through twelve.

Unfortunately, vaccinations are only covered as part of a Medicare patient’s pharmacy benefit—not under Medicare Part B—and are therefore not a source of revenue for clinicians administering them.

If you are on the fence when it comes to deciding if you want to provide preventive services, remember that CMS believes it will help keep patients healthy and Medicare patients will expect to take advantage of them. They can be a source of revenue for your practice if you know the requirements for each type of service and schedule the right type of visit up front. It’s costly when a patient believes they are in the office for a wellness visit and your staff has opened the template for a problem-oriented visit. Be sure to develop or use forms from specialty societies that meet the requirements. Remember, if you have the correct process in place, you can provide a valuable service to your patients and get paid for doing it.

Kareo regularly sponsors informative webinars such as this one on a variety of timely topics. From maximizing cash flow to managing the transition to ICD-10, you can take advantage of our valuable knowledgebase free of charge. If you would like to find information on any other topics of interest, feel free to check our webinar archive. Register now for our next educational webinar, Using RVUs to Improve Your Bottom Line, and learn how to maximize your revenue using this valuable tool.

Kathy McCoy, MBA May 10th, 2012

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In a grim reimbursement environment where payors always seem to be ratcheting down their contracted allowable payments, any new opportunities for extra cash flow are welcome. In a recent webinar sponsored by Kareo entitled Government Incentives for Medical Practices: Tips and Tools to Qualify, Participate and Get Paid, leading practice management expert and author Elizabeth Woodcock, MBA, FACMPE, CPC provided just that: ways practitioners can earn additional reimbursement through the affordable care act and “voluntary” incentive programs.

This post will highlight the information Elizabeth presented on reimbursement opportunities under the Affordable Care Act. Check back soon for her important and timely summary on “voluntary” incentive programs, and how you might actually be penalized if you do not participate.

Under the Affordable Care Act’s Primary Care Incentive Program (PCIP), certain practitioners are being paid a quarterly bonus of 10% of payments for selected codes by Medicare. As the name indicates, it primarily benefits primary care practitioners from specialties such as internal medicine, family practice, and geriatrics as well as nurse practitioners, physician assistants and clinical nurse specialists for whom primary care services account for at least 60% of allowed charges. The program runs from 2011-2016 and most practices would have received their first payment around April of last year. These payments are being made automatically and starting in the first quarter of 2012, will come as a “special incentive remittance” to more easily identify them. If you feel you qualify but have not received any payments, you can check your Medicare carrier’s website to see if your primary care provider is listed under the “PCIP Lookup Tool.” If not, you have the right to appeal in order to be included in the PCIP.

General surgeons in Healthcare Professional Shortage Areas are also receiving an extra payment for performing major surgical procedures. The program, the HPSA Surgical Incentive Payment (HSIP), also runs from 2011 to 2016. Then in 2013, a new program is being introduced: Medicare/Medicaid Rate Parity. For 24 months, primary care providers accepting Medicaid for evaluation and management services and vaccines are guaranteed to be paid at or equal to Medicare’s current rates. This will be a boon for many primary care practitioners who in the past, may have been paid as little as one-third of Medicare rates for the same service. Overall, the current ratio of Medicaid to Medicare is .66, so many primary care physicians will benefit when this program begins in 2013.

And finally, Elizabeth presented an overview of preventive services now being paid for by Medicare. Annual wellness visits are now covered, and they must include a health risk assessment as of January 2012. Other wellness services that are covered include an annual face-to-face obesity screening, annual screening and brief-face-to-face behavioral counseling for alcohol misuse, an annual depression screening, and bi-annual intensive behavioral therapy for cardiovascular disease. We recently covered these services and accompanying codes in a previous webinar entitled Optimizing Office Visits for Preventive Services.

You can view all of our archived webinars to find more topics of interest to you. To receive notification of upcoming informative webinars such as this one, subscribe to our newsletter list. You can also register now for our upcoming webinar on Using RVUs to Improve Your Bottom Line.

Kathy McCoy, MBA May 3rd, 2012

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It’s 2012 – Do you know where your cash flow is coming from? If you haven’t heard by now that high deductible health plans are putting medical practices more at risk than ever before, we have a must-view webinar for you. Called Let’s Collect Deductibles in 2012: Tips for Improving Self Pay Collections, it features noted practice management guru and author Sara M. Larch, MSHA, FACMPE quantifying why and how patient self-pay collections could make or break your practice in 2012. And she offers a comprehensive plan of action to make sure you collect all the monies due you from patients. Industry experts project that patient self-pay payments will make up 30 percent of a practice’s total annual revenue in 2012. That puts medical practices at risk of losing one third of their cash flow if they don’t start working hard to collect self-pay dollars directly from patients.

You can glean valuable information by checking our prior posts: Part I on the need for improving your self pay collections, Part II on motivating patients to pay at the time of service and Part III on “Best Practices” in self-pay collections. This blog post will underscore the case for avoiding sending accounts to collection agencies and ways to support your staff in improving their payment at the time of service (PATOS) skills.

During the webinar, Sara presented a compelling case for making PATOS collections a priority. According to Sara, co-pays that are uncollected at the time of service spend an average of 16 days in Accounts Receivables. Deductibles take four times longer than co-pays to collect. For balances due, most practices sent statements at 30, 60 and 90 days. Many send a letter accompanying the statement at 90, 120 and—if goes that long–150 days. The average cost for all this follow-up is $17.68 per account. If the balance is still unpaid, it typically goes to a collection agency at 180 days–at a cost of 25-50% of the recovered amounts. There’s no question that most practices would prefer to avoid the use a collection agency in chasing dollars owed by patients. In addition to creating an unpleasant touchpoint with patients, it’s expensive. Consistent and effective follow-up can be challenging and the older an account gets, the harder it is to collect. But the bottom line is this: on average, 50% of overall patients’ financial responsibility goes uncollected once they leave the office.

The statistics above are ones you should share with your office staff when you initiate intensified efforts to collect PATOS. Sara suggests that you ensure they also understand and be able to explain the practice’s patient collection policies, and to identify each patient’s expected co-pay, deductible and/or prior balance. They need to follow the practice’s cash collection policies and ask patients for payment in a firm, tactful manner.

Kareo regularly sponsors videos and webinars featuring leading medical billing experts discussing a variety of practice management issues. You can sign up for our notification list for upcoming informative webinars such as this one. And be sure to check out our webinar archive for other topics that may be of interest to you.

You can also hear Sara speak in our next webinar, Using RVUs to Improve Your Bottom Line. Register now!

Kathy McCoy, MBA April 26th, 2012

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When is a wellness visit more than a wellness visit? When it is one of the three types of preventive services visits now being covered by Medicare. During a recent webinar sponsored by Kareo entitled Optimizing Office Visits for Preventive Services, respected coding guru and author Betsy Nicoletti, M.S., CPC, drew some sharp distinctions between the timing and staging of the wellness visits that Medicare will fund for its enrollees. To understand each type of wellness visit, keep reading. Check back soon for details on how you can get paid for preventive services provided in tandem with wellness visits.

Medicare is now paying for three types of visits: the Welcome to Medicare visit (HCPCS code G0402) pays for newly enrolled Medicare patients to have an Initial Preventive Physical Exam (IPPE) within the first 12 months of enrollment. It is a once in a lifetime benefit and providers may also conduct and bill for a screening EKG (code G0403) during this visit. Enrollees lose this benefit if they do not schedule their Welcome to Medicare visit within one year of enrollment. What are the components of this type of visit? It includes:

Medical, family and social history, including medications, use of vitamins and supplements
Screening for depression using accepted tool
Screening for activities of daily living, safety, asking about hearing
Physical exam comprised of height, weight, BMI, BP, visual acuity
Screening EKG if needed
With patient consent, end of life planning
Counseling, education and referral based on above
Written plan given to patient for Medicare covered preventive services

Our next blog on this webinar will cover the Annual Wellness Visit, its components and components of subsequent Annual Wellness Visits. Bookmark our blog to make it easy to check back on that discussion. If you would like to explore any other practice management or medical billing topics of interest, feel free to check our webinar archive. You can also join our notification list for upcoming informative webinars such as this one.

You can also register now for next complimentary webinar, Using RVUs to Improve Your Bottom Line. Don’t miss it!

Kathy McCoy, MBA April 24th, 2012

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We all know the reimbursement outlook for medical practices continues to be bleak in 2012, but did you know it is possible to give yourself an immediate raise, even in this environment? How, you ask? By collecting the self-pay monies that patients owe you.

That was the subject of an information-jammed webinar recently presented by well-respected practice management expert and author Sara M. Larch, MSHA, FACMPE on behalf of Kareo. Called Let’s Collect Deductibles in 2012: Tips for Improving Self Pay Collections, the webinar offered an extensive arsenal of tips, strategies and tools you can use for improving your collections starting tomorrow. Why the sense of urgency? Because in 2012, the portion of your total revenue owed to you by patients will be the highest it’s ever been: a whopping 30 percent of the average practice’s total annual revenue. Compare that to 20 percent in 2011 and just 12 percent in 2007, and you can see the huge financial hit your practice will take if you don’t shore up your self-pay collections.

To help you get started, Kareo has been covering Sara’s extensive webinar in “quick-read” blogs that help you tackle this large topic. You can check out blogs #1 and #2 if you want to catch up. To learn what Sara considers some “Best Practices” in self-pay collections, keep reading.

It’s important to get some baseline information on how well you were doing on patient collections in 2011 before you can set goals for 2012. Hopefully, your practice management system will allow you to run a year-long snapshot that shows your total self pay collections in 2011. Going forward, Sara recommends that you start generating a Daily Cash Collection Report that includes a graph completed by collectors showing the amount of cash taken in at time of service by collector and by practice location.

Sara emphasized throughout her presentation that it is much more effective to collect payment at the time of service (PATOS) than at any other point of a patient’s interaction with the practice. When you start running a monthly PATOS report, you will see why: it shows the amount of dollars brought in as cash, what is outstanding as bad debt, what is still aging in AR and uncollected, and what has gone to collections. Obviously, you want to minimize the dollars in the latter categories and focus on improving cash PATOS. To set your 2012 goal for PATOS, Sara recommends you look at what you could potentially collect based on your various contracts and specific payer mix.

Sara also offered some Best Practice Strategies that could easily be implemented in your practice. Our prior blog mentioned the importance of having a solid financial policy in place that you communicate to patients at least annually. Prior to each appointment, it is important to verify the correct insurance information with the payor for each patient. If applicable, screen patients for Medicaid or Medicare eligibility. And have your staff calculate what the patient’s estimated payment portion should be, based on the required co-pays, deductibles and anticipated uncovered services.

Collect pre-payments for procedures or surgeries not fully covered by insurance

When patients arrive for their appointments, be sure to scan their insurance cards to capture current copay and deductible amounts. Collect pre-payments for procedures or surgeries not fully covered by insurance. If a patient is not contracted with an insurance company, have financial counselors negotiate a 75% to 100% payment upfront. Patients with high deductible health plans should also be expected to pay 75% of their estimated visit costs.

Billing fees can also be an effective way to motivate patients to pay at the time of service. Some practices levy a $10 statement fee if a copay is not paid, and a$15 late fee if copays are not paid in 30 days. Finally, Sara gave a great example of a letter (see below)—distributed with a self-addressed stamped envelope–that could be given to patients if they had not paid at the time of check-out. A cardiology practice that started using this simple technique increased its copay collections by 22% in 2 weeks!

We’ll be posting more from Sara’s webinar—be sure to check back for her thoughts on avoiding collections and supporting your staff in developing their PATOS collection skills. In the meantime, be sure to check out our Resource Center for all the videos and webinars Kareo has sponsored related to improving your cash flow and profitability.

You can also hear Sara speak in our next webinar, Using RVUs to Improve Your Bottom Line. Register now!

Kathy McCoy, MBA April 23rd, 2012

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May 24, 2012
10:00 AM – 11:00 AM PDT
Speaker: Sara Larch, MSHA, FACMPE

Medical practices have been using Relative Value Units (RVUs) since they were adopted by Medicare in 1992. In the early years, medical practices only utilized RVUs to understand the Medicare fee schedule. Now the role of RVUs has expanded. RVUs have become the standard measurement in analysis of reimbursement and payer contracts, physician compensation and productivity, and practice staffing and operating costs. The advantage of using RVUs in analysis is that they are not affected by factors that impact gross charges or collections.

In this webinar, we will discuss RVUs and how to use them to improve the medical practice’s profitability. Attendees will learn:

How RVUs are calculated
Why using RVUs improves the quality of your analysis
How to use RVUs in reimbursement analysis
“Best Practices” in RVU benchmarking

Sara Larch, MSHA, FACMPE, principal, Business of Medicine and co-author of “The Physician Billing Process: 12 Potholes to Avoid in the Road to Getting Paid,” will describe key methods for managing RVUs to improve your bottom line.

CEU Credit

“Using RVUs to Improve Your Bottom Line” meets the criteria of the Professional Association of Health Care Office Management and is approved for 1.0 CEU(s).
The American Medical Billing Association (AMBA) will award 1 CMRS CEU for participation in this webinar.

Question-and-Answer Session — Ask your tough questions and get answers about RVUs and ways to use them in your medical practice.

Who Should Attend
Private practice owners, office managers, billing managers, billing service owners and others concerned about improving practice cash flow.

About Your Speaker
Sara Larch, MSHA, FACMPE

Sara Larch, MSHA, FACMPE, is a speaker, author and consultant in the healthcare industry. She has more than 30 years of experience in medical group operations in private physician and large medical group practices, non-profit health systems, academic medical centers, and physician faculty practice plans.

Sara currently assists medical group practices with practice analysis & operational improvement, physician practice integration and alignment, facilitating and leading change, and physician and hospital relationships.

Sara is Past Board Chair of the Medical Group Management Association and Past President of the Academic Practice Assembly and the Association of Managers of Obstetrics and Gynecology. She is a co-author of “The Physician Billing Process: 12 Potholes to Avoid in the Road to Getting Paid and is a popular speaker at national and local conferences.

Kathy McCoy, MBA April 19th, 2012

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Medical billing professionals draw a sharp line between the coding for preventive services and coding for problem-oriented office visits. Clinicians, on the other hand, will tell you that the distinction is not so clear once you are in the exam room. How do you ensure you maximize reimbursement for each type of service, if they occur on the same day? Or DO you even provide them if you want to optimize your cash flow?

During a highly informative webinar entitled Optimizing Office Visits for Preventive Services, coding expert and author Betsy Nicoletti, M.S., CPC offered concise tips and guidelines for coding and billing the various types of office visits correctly, to maximize reimbursement. Her insights are extremely useful for any practices that routinely provide preventive services along with condition-focused health care.

Betsy began the webinar with an explanation of preventive services. The CPT book describes preventive services as a history and exam that is age and gender appropriate, but does not actually describe what services are “appropriate” by age or gender. Clinicians are instead referred to their respective medical society for those guidelines. Preventive services also include counseling on risk factor reduction and anticipatory guidance such as wearing sunscreen or child-proofing a household. And they include referrals for screening tests and immunizations – if you provide these services, you can bill for them as well.

Under health care reform, many patients will have first-dollar coverage for annual exams, without a co-payment or deductible. That’s welcome news for providers, since this wasn’t always the case before. Other preventive services you may be able to bill for include:

lab tests done in the office;
the administration of vaccines and the serum if you purchased it;
venipuncture;
and hearing and eye tests.

Note that coverage will vary by insurance plan – just because it is listed in the CPT book as a legitimate service does not always mean it is covered by a health plan.

In terms of coding visits correctly, Betsy emphasizes that it is critical to ensure that the right visit type is noted at the time a patient makes an appointment. Whether using a paper chart or an electronic health record, getting the visit type correct up front allows the medical assistant to open the right template for documenting the services provided. It also allows the scheduler to allocate enough time for each type of visit.

In some cases, you may be able to bill for a problem-oriented visit as well as the wellness visit if you performed the key components associated with a problem-oriented visit that same day. Documentation is key here. The provider must note the symptoms and status in the history, and the assessment and plan actually must address the patient’s problem. In these cases, medical billers would use a 25 modifier on the problem-oriented visit.

In the webinar, Betsy also spends some time discussing the various types of wellness visits covered by Medicare. Check back for our blog on that discussion. If you would like to find information on any other topics of interest, feel free to check our webinar archive. You can also join our notification list for upcoming informative webinars such as this one.

Kathy McCoy, MBA April 3rd, 2012

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So you think your practice is doing a credible job of collecting monies due from patients—but you’re not sure. Anyone who sat in on the recent webinar Let’s Collect Deductibles in 2012: Tips for Improving Self Pay Collections, however, now has a much better handle on their true self-pay collections profile. To determine if you might benefit from viewing the entire webinar, see if you can answer these questions for your practice:

What percent of your patients pay at time of service?
How much does your medical practice collect annually at the time of service?
How much could you collect annually at the time of service?
When will a patient receive a statement if they don’t pay their copay or deductible?
What percent of patients pay their self pay balance when they’re billed after the visit?
What does it cost to send a patient a statement?
What are the legal or contractual risks of not making a good faith attempt to collect copays, coinsurance, and deductibles?

According to our webinar presenter, practice management expert and author Sara M. Larch, MSHA, FACMPE, few medical groups can answer these questions. Why is it important to have a better handle on your self-pay collections? Because according to industry experts, nearly one-third of your total annual revenue in 2012 will be owed to you directly by patients–not their insurance. That statistic alone shows the need for greater focus on payment at time of service (PATOS)–even if you think your office is already doing a good job.

Fortunately, those who are short on time can check out our series of blog posts based on Sara’s webinar. The first blog in this series offered more statistics you can share with your office staff to get them on board with improving your patient collections. This post will focus on motivating patients to pay at the time of service.

According to Sara, it is important to have a clear patient financial policy in place and to communicate those terms to patients. It should include an explanation of payment-related terms such as co-insurance, copayments and deductibles. It should spell out when the patient will be expected to pay (“Be prepared to pay at each visit. We will be collecting all copays, deductibles, and coinsurance due.”). And it should list all the ways that patients can pay (“Payment can be made by cash, check or credit or debit card.”) Sara advises that you give your financial policy to all new patients, and annually to established or returning patients. You should also post it on your practice website and patient portal, if you have one. You can find sample language for more firm yet professional financial policies in the webinar.

Other terms you should spell out in the policy include additional obligations of the patient. These include bringing their insurance card to every visit, and paying for any care not covered by insurance upon check-in.

Remind patients of your policies when they call to schedule an appointment. Remember, patients are most amenable to paying their balances prior to their appointment because they want to see their doctor. If a patient has an outstanding balance and calls for an appointment, make it clear they will need to pay what they owe before the doctor sees them. In her presentation, Sara also gives a great example of a sign-in sheet that asks how payment will be rendered right at the check-in desk.

Sara’s presentation was chock-full of other great tips on Improving Self Pay Collections. Be sure to check back for more from the webinar. Kareo regularly sponsors videos and webinars featuring leading medical billing experts discussing a variety of practice management issues. Be sure to check out our webinar archive for other topics that may be of interest to you.

To learn how practices can deal with the business epidemic of insurance underpayment, Kareo will be sponsoring a free webinar this month entitled “Getting Paid Accurately: What the National Health Insurer Report Card Means to Your Practice and How You Get Paid.” Register now to learn more about the impact of insurance underpayment and what you can do to protect your practice.

Kathy McCoy, MBA March 22nd, 2012

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Thursday, April 19, 2012
1:00 PM EDT/10:00 AM PDT
Speaker: Frank Cohen

Did you know that the AMA’s National Health Insurer Report Card (NHIRC) for 2011 revealed that you may be paid accurately what you are contractually owed as little as 62% of the time? Did you know that physicians spend nearly three full work-weeks per year interacting with payers on administrative tasks? In this webinar, you’ll hear from Frank Cohen, one of the architects and the lead analyst/statistician for the National Health Insurer Report Card, on what the NHIRC means for your practice profitability and how you can use the information to improve your denial rates and your revenue.

You’ll review:

What the National Health Insurer Report Card means to your practice
How to develop your own insurer report card
How to evaluate your payer contracts – not all contracts are good contracts
How to determine whether you should consider seeing only cash-paying patients, and the compliance implications of that decision
And much more

With profit levels for private practices falling drastically, you can’t afford to lose money on the front end. Learn how to evaluate your payers and their accuracy in payments to improve your bottom line.

CEU Credit

“Getting Paid Accurately: What the National Health Insurer Report Card Means to Your Practice and How You Get Paid” meets the criteria of the Professional Association of Health Care Office Management and is approved for 1.0 CEU(s).

You can download the Kareo Getting Paid Accurately handout for the webinar now.

Question-and-Answer Session — Ask your tough questions about the NHIRC, payer accuracy and payer evaluation.

Who Should Attend
Private practice owners, office managers, billing managers, billers, billing service owners and others concerned about receiving accurate, timely payments from insurers will benefit from this informative session.

About Your Speaker:
Frank Cohen

Frank Cohen is principal and Senior Analyst for The Frank Cohen Group, LLC and a certified Master Black Belt in Lean Six Sigma. As a consultant and researcher, his areas of expertise include data mining, predictive analytics, applied statistics, process improvement and evidence-based decision support.

Mr. Cohen is the author of several books, including his newest, “Lean Six Sigma for the Medical Practice; Improving Profits by Improving Processes”. Mr. Cohen has participated in and published numerous articles and studies and trained thousands of physicians, administrators, CPAs and other healthcare professionals in all areas of healthcare analytics. He is one of the architects and the lead analyst/statistician for the AMA’s National Health Insurer Report Card.

Mr. Cohen’s experience includes eight years as a Physician Assistant in both the Navy and as a civilian, clinic administrator and hospital CEO. His clients include hospitals, large and small medical practices, medical and professional associations, legal and accounting professionals, government agencies and other health care professionals.

Kathy McCoy, MBA February 28th, 2012

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Selecting the right electronic health record can seem like a daunting task. If given the choice, many medical providers would prefer to continue using paper charts indefinitely because that is the system they know and have always used. However, with Medicare requiring that claims be submitted electronically—and with many payors now following suit—staying paper-based forever is not an option.

To help those providers who are currently in the throes of selecting an EHR, Kareo asked health information systems expert Ron Sterling of Sterling Solutions, LTD to walk participants through the process. Kareo frequently sponsors informational webinars to help practitioners through their most difficult practice management issues. Ron is a nationally acknowledged expert on the selection of EMRs and practice management systems. He authored the Book of the Year, Keys to EMR/EHR Success, according to the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS). We have posted a series of blogs that summarize the key points from Ron’s webinar, entitled What You Need to Know About Selecting the Right EHR. You can read the previous posts now: What You Need to Know About Selecting the Right EHR: EHR Selection Strategies and What You Need to Know About Selecting the Right EHR: EHR Relationships with PMSs and Patient Portals. This post focuses on five key components of EHRs that most practices will need to manage patients appropriately.

Document manager and patient service tools

According to Ron, most practices will want a document manager that allows clinicians to monitor and view images such as x-rays, images from MRI studies or medical reports. Be sure your EHR can handle the types of images you view most in your specialty. Another important component is the bundle of patient service tools that comes with your EHR. Functionality such as triage tools, refill tracking, coordinating care, messaging, and issuing reports to patients can help manage patients more smoothly while documenting the care provided.

Workflow tools and patient portals

Workflow tools are important as well. They support patient services within the office and collaboration among doctors and staff. They also provide a way to facilitate the tracking of messages and issue resolution, the routing of incoming outgoing items and overall patient interactions. Patient portals are another component that will also help manage patients. They allow patients to proactively contact the practice with refill requests and questions for their practitioner, and enable the office to contact patients with reminders, messages, access information, test results and more.

Clinical content

Clinical content, another component, will of course vary by specialty. It should be detailed enough to support the other components yet offer the flexibility to alter it to the practice’s needs. Some EHRs offer toolkits that allow practitioners to tailor how the clinical record will look. But Ron advises caution with toolkits, since changing the order of how information appears may affect interoperability with other EHR components.

Check back soon for more articles on EHR selection and management by Ron in our monthly enewsletter. And feel free to review our complimentary webinar archives for other informative videos that may interest you. Kareo regularly sponsors webinars that feature industry experts discussing ways to improve your medical billing and reimbursement. You can also receive notice of upcoming webinars by signing up on our notification list. If you’d like to know which EHRs Kareo integrates with, please visit the EHR page on our site.

Optimizing Office Visits for Preventive Services #4: Other Services You Can Bill With a Wellness Visit

Kathy McCoy, MBA May 17th, 2012

Government Incentives for Medical Practices: Tips and Tools to Qualify, Participate and Get Paid #1

Kathy McCoy, MBA May 10th, 2012

Let’s Collect Deductibles in 2012: Tips for Improving Self Pay Collections #4

Kathy McCoy, MBA May 3rd, 2012

Optimizing Office Visits for Preventive Services #2: The Welcome to Medicare Visit

Kathy McCoy, MBA April 26th, 2012

Let’s Collect Deductibles in 2012: Tips for Improving Self Pay Collections #3 – Best Practices

Kathy McCoy, MBA April 24th, 2012

Complimentary Webinar: Using RVUs to Improve Your Bottom Line

Kathy McCoy, MBA April 23rd, 2012

May 24, 2012
10:00 AM – 11:00 AM PDT
Speaker: Sara Larch, MSHA, FACMPE

Optimizing Office Visits for Preventive Services #1

Kathy McCoy, MBA April 19th, 2012

Let’s Collect Deductibles in 2012: Tips for Improving Self Pay Collections

Kathy McCoy, MBA April 3rd, 2012

Complimentary Webinar – Getting Paid Accurately: What the National Health Insurer Report Card Means to Your Practice and How You Get Paid

Kathy McCoy, MBA March 22nd, 2012

Thursday, April 19, 2012
1:00 PM EDT/10:00 AM PDT
Speaker: Frank Cohen

What You Need to Know About Selecting the Right EHR: Key Components of EHRs

Kathy McCoy, MBA February 28th, 2012

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May 24, 2012 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM PDT Speaker: Sara Larch, MSHA, FACMPE

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Thursday, April 19, 2012 1:00 PM EDT/10:00 AM PDT Speaker: Frank Cohen

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May 24, 2012
10:00 AM – 11:00 AM PDT
Speaker: Sara Larch, MSHA, FACMPE

Thursday, April 19, 2012
1:00 PM EDT/10:00 AM PDT
Speaker: Frank Cohen